In the 1970’s, Mark Tarlov worked as a speechwriter for the Supreme Court and then as an attorney for the Justice Department. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, Tarlov produced over a dozen films and, just before the millennium, directed his first (Simply Irresistible). Nowadays, as the co-founder of Maison L’Envoyé, he is best known as a wine-maker.

To the untrained eye, Mark Tarlov’s career might seem like a strange sequence of unconnected dots. But that’s not how he sees it. Not at all. Because there’s a thread that binds all of those seemingly disparate professions together: storytelling. And, above all else, Tarlov is a storyteller at heart. Which was both evident and enjoyable as we spent just over an hour chatting about all sorts of topics. From rescuing Willy Wonka and playing pick-up basketball with Peter Falk to the beauty and difficulty of telling personal stories in Hollywood.